


Left Out in the Cold

by Enclave



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-03-31 22:35:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3995593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enclave/pseuds/Enclave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky and Steve's car breaks down in deep snow after a government function. Bucky is suddenly overwhelmed by memories of a different time he was left out in the cold. H/C ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left Out in the Cold

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written anything Marvel-related before and only started watching the movies a couple of weeks ago. Therefore I'm not one hundred percent sure my characters are one hundred percent in character. Constructive criticism is appreciated on that front. This is purely a self-indulgent fic but I always want to hear what people do and don't like!
> 
> Secondly, this work is completely unresearched and I wrote it 100% for fun. I'm fairly sure that senators do not get together at someone's house to discuss bills. So I'm invoking creative license on that front.
> 
> Hope you like it!

 “Steve, it’s going to be absolutely fine. I’ll be with you the whole time,” Bucky says, placing a hand on Steve’s shoulder as he drives. “It’s just a quick ceremonial dinner. We’ll be in and out. There’ll be food,” he reminds him.

“I know, Buck,” Steve says, the tension in his jaw and brow remaining undiminished. He stares fixedly at the road, as if he can push their destination further away with the weight of his gaze. Since his useless days advertising war bonds to the public got Bucky captured (in his mind), he's almost violently averse to any sort of ‘ceremonial’ function, where he's expected to show up, look pretty (and as muscular as possible), and mingle with various state officials. Although his name is Captain America, he resents his position acting as a figurehead for the American government as a whole. In his mind, it's not appropriate. He's a staunch supporter of certain American ideals such as freedom and compassion, but his values frequently put him at odds with the official government itself, even though they fit the American zeitgeist as determined by the masses.

He tries to take a deep breath and ends up sighing through his teeth. He schools his features into what he hopes is a more relaxed expression, wishing to put Bucky at ease. It's his fault that he decided to drag Bucky along, anyway, and his responsibility to make the annoying errand as painless as possible for him.

“It’s okay, Steve,” Bucky says, as if he can hear his internal monologue. “Don’t overthink it.”

“I’m trying not to,” Steve grits out. He flicks the windshield wipers on to brush away the layer of snow that is beginning to accumulate on the front window, and while he's thinking about it turns on the brights since the road is deserted. It has been a crisp day and the snow, which fell sporadically throughout the afternoon, is now falling more thickly. The car’s heating system keeps him and Bucky cozy, but his visibility is decreasing as the weather washes out the landscape before him.

 

* * *

 

Steve and Bucky got together shortly after Bucky broke away from Hydra’s brainwashing and joined with SHIELD. In Steve’s words, it was pretty difficult for either of them to find anyone else with shared life experience - and besides that, their new vulnerability in the contemporary world, assaulted from every angle by flashing lights and fast cars and, although in very different senses, the aftermath of the trauma they had undergone, exposed the tender, boyish affection they had for each other, denied or downplayed for years but now free to blossom and grow.

It was this relationship that made it so easy for Steve to bring Bucky along to the state dinner to mingle with the Senate representatives who would be there, debating and discussing various eddies and ripples in the tides of bureaucracy that Steve had embarrassingly little knowledge of and further did not care much about - traffic laws and county-level taxes that were important on the micro scale, but had little purchase in Steve's view of America as a greater whole.

The dinner passes uneventfully. Steve puts on his brightest and most endearing smile and circles the room, nodding along with various conversations but devoting most of his attention to the hors d’oeurves circling on silver platters ( _real_ silver, he noticed, reflecting watery blue light onto the faces of the servers). Bucky, on the other hand, singlemindedly dotes on Steve, outright ignoring the senators’ mixed attitudes towards him. He’s well aware that some of them consider him a liability to the country, but he tries to put their disapproving stares out of his mind as he squeezes Steve’s hand and steadies him with touches on his back, trying to telepathically remind him that he’s more than a figurehead even if he sometimes is roped into serving that purpose.

They both leave having eaten well of the appetizers and with no lasting memory of the names or faces of anyone there. Bucky leans warmly into Steve as they walk back to their car through a blanket of high, fluffy snow, which had accumulated to almost a foot as they had networked. It shows no signs of slowing. Invisibly charcoal gray against the night sky, it appears as a swirling tempest under the cone of dirty light from the single yellow streetlamp outside the home where the party took place. They are in a rural area, a senator’s country retreat, and not only are the gravel roads untouched and pristine with snow (indicating without a doubt that Steve and Bucky were the first to leave, and also that the road is so deserted that nobody else has had occasion to pass by in the last three hours) but Steve iss sure that no matter how long they wait, no plow will pass outside this function.

The two pile into the car, Steve climbing back into the driver’s seat because Bucky had snatched a number of glasses of unbelievably high-end champagne and downed them without propriety while they were detained at the function. Steve had looked reproachful at this but hadn’t stopped him or said anything; Bucky was enough of a saint to come as it was, and Steve wouldn’t demand he perform this duty sober. His slight intoxication is visible in his dark eyes crinkled with silent laughter and the flush in his boyish cheeks.

Steve can’t help grinning and falling in love all over again when he sees Bucky’s expression of relief at being away from all the dignitaries and his clumsy stretch backwards as he settles into his seat.

Steve starts the engine and manages to get the car onto the road without incident, and Bucky leans against the passenger side door, occasionally touching the cuff of Steve’s shirt for a little human contact, but mostly just watching the snow-heavy limbs of the trees fly by and enjoying the gentle movement of  Steve’s careful driving. Despite his best efforts, his eyes begin to flicker and drift shut, and in twenty minutes he is almost asleep. 

 

* * *

 

Bucky is unpleasantly jostled back to full consciousness as the car suddenly stalls out in the middle of the road. “Shit!” he yelps as Steve, looking panicked, accidentally jerks the steering wheel to the right. The car, its motor deathly silent, skids out in the deep snow and noses its way off the road. Bucky’s heart is pounding as they slide to a stop on the shoulder, and as he gains awareness he realizes he is gripping the dashboard tightly with both hands. There are dimples in the plastic around the fingers of his metal arm. He slowly unclamps them both. The dashboard lights are dark, no part of the car giving a sign of life. Steve grips the steering wheel with white, clawed fingers, visibly sweating. “You okay?” he asks Bucky as he recovers from the shock of the car’s failure.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Bucky says, shaken. His long hair has fallen into his eyes, and he pushes it out of his face with one hand, looking up at Steve, who is quickly regaining his composure.

“I didn’t want to say anything, because you were asleep,” Steve says finally. “But I think there’s a belt problem with the motor. I noticed the engine temperature rising and now the whole car’s died. We’ll have to get Tony to fix it - but in the meantime, it’s not safe to drive.”

“How do you know anything about modern cars?” Bucky asks with a waver in his voice.

“Tony,” Steve answers succinctly.

“Makes sense,” he mumbles, swallowing conspicuously. Confused memories are flickering though his mind, taking up his attention so that he can’t pay any to the conversation Steve is holding with him. He remembers snow, being trapped in the snow, at night... long hours of icy cold, ribbons of pain slicing through his skin... Bucky feels dizzy, and slightly untethered.

Steve gives him a long, appraising look. “You okay, Buck?” he asks, forcing nonchalance.

"’M fine,” he says after a pause. “Still a little drunk, maybe.” He smiles weakly. “Just wanna get out of here.” He blinks hard, trying to dismiss those memories. He refuses to be weak and to let them take over. He’s the Winter Soldier. He does not let the past control him, damnit. Not when Steve is so composed.

“Alright. I’m going to call Natasha and see if she can get us a ride home.”

Steve opens his flip-phone - he refuses to upgrade to a smartphone, despite Bucky’s insistence that technology is a good thing; Steve agrees but doesn’t think he needs such a multipurpose device when he already has his flip-phone and a laptop - and punches in Natasha’s number. Bucky sits in the useless corpse of the car, all-too-cognizant of the heat they’re rapidly losing, and listens to the faint, tinny rings from the phone speakers, which somehow make him feel even less comfortable, less confident that this is real life in the modern era, and not a ravine from decades ago. He tries to slow his erratic breathing, as he can feel his heart rate is still too high. Steve can’t know he’s nervous. Can’t see how weak he is against these intruding memories.

Nat picks up on the third ring. “Yes?” she says, packing a sardonic tone into the one compliant word.

“Hi, Natasha, it’s me and Bucky... how did you know?” Steve pauses for her response, and then flicks the GPS embedded in the dashboard with his pointer finger and mutters with chagrin, “I knew this thing was evil.” Resuming his regular tone, he finishes his conversation with her. “An hour? But... Well, okay. We’ll be waiting. Yes, ma’m. Alright. Bye.” He snaps the phone shut. “She already knew our car broke down, from the GPS. Said she noticed our dot stopped moving. But she says it’ll probably take about an hour for... Bucky?”

Bucky is curled over on himself, head near the dashboard and hair a dark curtain over his face so that Steve can’t see his eyes. Both arms wrap around his midsection. He slurs thickly to Steve, “Think I’m ‘na be sick.”

“Okay, Bucky, hold on a moment,” Steve says as calmly as he can. He vaults over Bucky and pushes the passenger-side door open, letting a swirl of snow and a blast of cold air into the car. As soon as the cold hits him, Bucky lurches forward with a burp that turns into a retch, stifling it in his metal fist. Quickly Steve manhandles him to face the open door. Bucky is limp and shaking and sweating and as soon as he’s oriented towards the door, he retches again and throws up watery vomit into the snow with a terrible, wet noise. He starts to inhale, chokes, coughs, and vomits again. Steve rubs his back. “Bucky, what’s wrong?” He can’t respond right away, continuing to shake and occasionally spit up liquid between his legs, hyperventilating with panic bordering on dissociation. His slacks are dotted with bile and his shoes will need to be disposed of, Bucky thinks detachedly before he heaves again, this time only producing an acidic splash of foul-tasting bile that triggers another bout of coughing and shaking. He is ashamed to find that tears are rolling down his face. He drops his head forward into his hand weakly, again trying to get ahold of his panicked breaths and to school them into the calm pattern of breathing Hydra taught him, trying to shut the uncontrollable emotion out. “Bucky.” Steve’s voice is faint. Finally Bucky manages to tell Steve, “It’s the cold...”

Immediately Steve bundles Bucky back into the car and closes the door. The howling of the wind and snow are held at bay, although most of the warmth of the heater has already been lost to the outside along with the contents of Bucky’s stomach. “We’re going to be okay,” Steve says. “Just an hour.” Bucky stifles a sob. “Come here,” Steve says, and drags his friend over the partition between their two seats and into his lap. Now he can really feel Bucky’s quivering as the incoherently apologizing soldier melts into his lap, locking his arms around Steve’s neck and burying his face, wet with tears and saliva, in his shoulder. “Don’t be sorry,” Steve says, only half-comfortable in this role. “Talk to me, Bucky. What’s going on?”

“It was the cold,” he moans miserably. “When I was in that ravine, after I fell...”

“Oh, Bucky.” Steve holds him a little tighter.

“It took them a long time to find me... And it was so icy, my hands went numb, and then my limbs...” He shudders, snuffles back tears and gasping for breath. “I’m sorry. It just hit me,” he says in a low voice.

“It’s alright,” Steve says, and continues stroking his back as Bucky burrows farther into him, tightly gathering two handfuls of the material of Steve’s suit jacket into his fists. _Slow, deep breaths_ , Bucky tells himself. “You’re doing so good,” Steve says. “It’s okay to be scared.”

 

* * *

 

Steve had hoped that at some point Bucky would run out of adrenalin and relax until Natasha showed up. What he has gotten instead is intermittent bouts of crying which Bucky is overwhelmingly embarrassed by, and an unusual clinginess so acute that Bucky tears little holes in Steve’s jacket where he grabs it with his cold metal arm. The car quickly grows frigid, and by the end of their wait Steve is holding Bucky as close as he can to share his body heat with him and to receive it in return. Steve only shakes his head hard at Natasha when she opens the car door with amused inquisitiveness on her face and her mouth already open with some sly comment, and Nat bites back whatever she was going to say about their situation, a rare moment of conscientiousness for her. Steve helps Bucky out into the snow, but Bucky insists he can walk on his own, and does so out to the waiting helicopter. (“A whole helicopter? Really?” Steve asks. “Hard to get a car out here in this snow,” Natasha points out, and it’s true. “A helicopter was easier. Besides, more code to mess with in a helicopter, and who doesn’t love that?” Steve chooses to ignore that last comment.)

Bucky sits up straight and smiles where it’s conversationally appropriate on the ride home, effectively feigning confidence and security. Still, even once Natasha has left them at the door to their shared apartment and Steve has wrapped Bucky in a blanket and made hot tea for them both, he scrutinizes Bucky, wondering how he never saw this trauma before, lurking just under Bucky’s surface.

That night, he holds Bucky a little tighter, a little closer than normal, curling around him protectively even though it is 73 degrees inside their apartment and the both of them are under two blankets and a downy comforter. 


End file.
